Forensics for fun?

We’ve all been immersed up to our eyebrows in forensic detail this week. There’s the gruesome process of identifying Jasmine Fiore’s body, the procedural issues of the failure-to-find and then success locating Jaycee Lee Dugard, as well as the nuances of cause-of-death and toxicology reports in the Michael Jackson case. Some of these stories seem too bizarre even for fiction. So who do writers and producers turn to when they want to nail down forensic details? Who does this work for fun? Here’s an interview with D.P. Lyle – author of Forensics for Dummies, other forensics manuals for writers, as well as several works of fiction, and a frequent forensics consultant.

D.P. Lyle

DocG: So how did a renowned cardiologist end up as the nation’s foremost adviser to writers/producers who are looking for ways to maim, kill, and detect?

DPL: I’m not sure renowned is the correct word but it’s a lot better than “person of interest.” How did I get involved in helping other writers and producers with her stories? Oh, the usual way. As you well know, as a physician if you attend a cocktail party people want talk about their health – their cholesterol, their gallbladder, their prostate, or whatever. If you attend writers’ conferences, the writers want to know how poisons work, what gunshot wounds look like, what a body looks like eight days after death, and fun things like that.

As I began to answer more and more questions from writers I decided it would be a good idea to set up a website just for that purpose. My site not only has articles of interest to writers but is also a portal for them to reach me to ask questions about their stories. I am continually amazed at the workings of the creative minds of these writers and they repetitively come up with the most clever and sometimes the most odd questions. I never fail to learn something.

Right now I have over 4000 questions from writers on my computer. Some of them appear in my monthly article The Forensic Files, which appears in The Third Degree, the newsletter of Mystery Writers of America, and also in the newsletter for Novelists, Inc. Some of the best questions I’ve received over the years appear in my two question-and-answer books.

DocG: Tell us a bit about your books – with all that insider murder-knowledge, do you ever worry that they might fall into the hands of, well, frankly, an evil overlord? Or even a really really angry girl scout?

DPL: Funny you should mention that but I do believe I’m being stalked by a very angry Girl Scout right now. No, it’s true. I saw her green uniform fly over the back fence when I turned the lights on last night.

I honestly don’t worry a great deal about that simply because all the information that I give out to writers is findable on the Internet anyway. I look at my role as a translator for writers. I’m a cardiologist and do not live in the forensic world, but I do understand the language. I’m able to understand forensics and able to educate myself on all of its various subjects. After all I was a chemistry major in college and as you well know in medical school you take classes in anatomy, physiology, biochemistry, histology, pharmacology, bacteriology, and all those other ologies. Forensic science is simply looking at the same sciences from a medico-legal point of view rather than a strictly medical one.

When a writer asks me a question about some area of forensic science, I attempt to give them the science they need to know to construct their story and explain the science to them in simple terms, and I will then often suggest ways they can use this information in the scene that they’re working on. My two question-and-answer books – Murder and Mayhem and Forensics and Fiction – are collections of many of the best questions I have received over the years. Writers enjoy these books because they give them ideas for their own stories as well as educate them about various forensic issues.

My other two books on forensics are more reference to nature. Forensics For Dummies was the first of these books, and though it was designed to be read by the general public, I actually wrote it with writers in mind. They only wanted current stuff in the book and no historical background. I then wrote Howdunnit: Forensics for Writers Digest Books in their updated Howdunnit series. This is a much more comprehensive reference book and covers a great deal of historical information about how various forensic techniques developed over the years.

DocG: What would be your perfect crime? Have you used it yet in your novels? [spoiler alert]

DPL: There is no such thing as a perfect crime. Criminals, much to their dismay, have discovered this truth time and again throughout history. They always make a mistake and sometimes just bad luck does them in. I mean even O.J. Simpson, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, almost got away with it. His plan was to kill Nicole, hop the redeye to Chicago, and be 1000 miles away when the children discovered her body the next morning. He’s such a pleasant person. Unfortunately for him, Ron Goldman showed up and a life-and-death battle followed, which blew his entire timeline out of water. Remember the limo driver waiting for him back at his Rockingham residence and then seeing him run across his own front yard—something he denied at trial? And then the dog screwed him, too. Goldman left he front gate open when he arrived. The dog walked through all the blood and then headed off down the street to see what was happening in the neighborhood as dogs will do. A neighbor out walking saw the bloody dog and followed the footprints right back to the crime. The bodies were discovered long before O.J. ever reached Chicago. Stuff like this happens all the time.

But perhaps the most difficult crime to solve is that a sniper. Here the killing is done from a distance and only a single piece of forensic evidence is left, that being the bullet. The bullet is of little value unless the weapon can be located and it can be matched to that gun. So if the sniper kills a single person, from a distance, with a single shot, and destroys the gun, and of course had no relationship with the victim whatsoever, and never said a word to anyone about it, and had the good fortune for his shooting not to be witnessed by some citizen or by some surveillance camera that he was unaware of, then he just might get away with it. But few snipers shoot only a single person. They usually have some grudge against the government, some organization, or life in general and they shoot people to make a statement. And typically they need to make that statement over and over. This is what gets them caught.

DocG: Cardiologists are known for being hands-on kind of people. How do you research your books?

DPL: While I have visited a couple crime labs, spent time with a few medical examiners, and spent a wild and crazy afternoon with the vice squad, most of my research revolves around things I already know or things that I can pick up in books or on the Internet. And as I always say when I am teaching other writers, the story is not about the technology. The story is not about some cool forensic technique or some odd and bizarre disease. The story is about the people and the technology is only important in how it affects these people.

DocG: Can you tell us what’s ahead for your many talents? And where writers can go to get some of your insider, personalized forensic advice?

DPL: My next book of fiction, Stress Fracture, will be out next April. It is the first in my new Dub Walker series. Dub is an expert in evidence and how it clings together and in how criminals think. He has written widely on the subject and lectured across the country about it and is often consulted on cases that are difficult to solve. In Stress Fracture he deals with the problem of PTSD and a new drug for treating its most severe victims, those with extremely violent tendencies. Needless to say, things don’t go well and Dub gets in a life-and-death struggle with a completely maniacal killer.

Stress Fracture

The second in the series is also completed and has been sold to the same publisher, Medallion Press. I don’t know its publication date yet. It is titled Hot Lights, Cold Steel and deals with robotic surgery. The third in the series, currently titled Run To Ground, is underway and in fact the first draft is nearly completed. The fourth and the fifth books in the series are already outlined and one of them is partially written. Also I have a couple of other nonfiction books that I’m working on from time to time.

Writers, readers, and other interested people can visit my website The Writer’s Forensic Lab at: www.dplylemd.com. There are some interesting articles there and a ton of links to sites for writers and anyone interested in forensic science. There is also a link to my Blog—The Writers Forensics Blog – where I try to discuss the science involved in current or unusual cases and interesting news stories.

D. P. Lyle, MD is the Macavity Award winning and Edgar Award nominated author of the non-fiction books, Murder and Mayhem, Forensics For Dummies, Forensics and Fiction, and Howdunnit: Forensics: A Guide For Writers as well as the thrillers, Devil’s Playground and Double Blind. His next medical thriller, Stress Fracture, will be released early 2010. He has worked with many novelists and with the writers of popular television shows such as Law & Order, CSI: Miami, Diagnosis Murder, Monk, Judging Amy, Peacemakers, Cold Case, House, Medium, Women’s Murder Club, and 1-800-Missing.

Through his website, The Writers’ Medical and Forensics Lab (www.dplylemd.com) he works with writers and readers to enrich their understanding of complex medical and forensic issues in the stories they write and read.